


so look at the fleeting stars with fleeting eyes

by sesquidpedalian



Series: Dr. Stone Week 2020 [5]
Category: Dr. STONE (Anime)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Future Tense, Gen, POV Multiple, i just have a lot of feelings about senku okay, i think
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:08:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25042915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sesquidpedalian/pseuds/sesquidpedalian
Summary: One pleasant morning, Senku will look out the window and see a flash of green. He will suck in a breath on sheer human instinct, and curse, and become, for thousands of years, a repository of memory.For Dr. Stone Week 2020 Day Five: Reactions - Soul Mates, Scars, For Want of a Nail
Relationships: Ishigami Senkuu & Everyone
Series: Dr. Stone Week 2020 [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2078955
Comments: 8
Kudos: 62
Collections: Dr. Stone Week 2020





	so look at the fleeting stars with fleeting eyes

**Author's Note:**

> me, sitting bolt upright in the middle of the night: i think i will write an entire fic in future tense, actually
> 
> title from this Welcome to Night Vale quote: "So look at the fleeting stars with fleeting eyes, and feel how the earth beneath you gives. It is all a temporary manifestation of particles, and it is all unraveling back to particulate silence. The bustle of the human day will come and will go. And then there will be night." (Episode 49 - Old Oak Doors Part B)

This is a story about scars.

But not in the usual way.

This is a story about the marks we leave on ourselves, on each other, on the grassy meadows and in the sides of trees. Paintings. Rose bushes. Grandchildren. Legacy. We obsess over history, and we dream of leaping through time. 

This is a story about time too. Wormholes and sci-fi. The speed of light bringing news millennia out of date. The complicated dance of bodies around uneven distributions of mass and energy. The future, we hope against desperate mortal hope, will someday be a destination reached as easily as the town at the other end of a train line.

This is a story about the ordinary ways of travelling through time, of scorching oneself indelibly into the universe’s essence. Second by slow ticking second. Step by aching step. Through time and space, through thought and memory, leaving handprints in the soft clay of human history.

This is the story of how Ishigami Senku walked through time.

* * *

The day will be bright and hot. They will just be leaving the used car depot, Senku with silent, watchful eyes, Byakuya with a wad of cash in his pocket.

Senku will ask, “Why did you sell the car? Do you need more money? Are you going to be poor soon?” He will sound demanding, but no amount of petulance will hide the worry that borders on panic shining in his eyes. He’s a kindergartener, after all. 

_He’s a kindergartener_ , Byakuya will think, looking down at this wide-eyed child who will see so much and do even more.

Byakuya will reach down to take Senku’s hand. Senku will have by now learned to stop huffing and sliding away from every hint of contact. He will have by now started reaching for Byakuya’s hand on his own when they cross busy intersections.

Byakuya will say, “No, we have enough money to keep living exactly as we have been. Don’t you worry.”

Senku will shuffle a little bit closer, until the two of them are barely centimetres apart. Ever curious, he will demand, “What’s the money for then? Isn’t it more useful to have a car? And how much do you get for selling a car anyway?”

Byakuya will laugh in that way that makes Senku glare at him, furiously scrunching up his nose as if that makes him angrier looking and not more adorable.

“It’s a surprise, Senku,” Byakuya will sing-song.

Senku will settle, because he will be all of five-and-two-thirds years old, but he will know the rules. A surprise is a surprise, and it won’t be scary if it’s Byakuya doing it because he’s old and silly and strange about affection, and you’re not allowed to ask further questions because that would ruin the surprise. That doesn’t mean you can’t _think_ about it though.

So Senku will ruminate on this mysterious surprise for as long as his young brain can hold it in his head, and he and Byakuya will walk home, hand-in-hand. Neither of them will know it yet, but this is the closest they will ever stand for the rest of their lives.

* * *

One pleasant morning, Senku will look out the window and see a flash of green. He will suck in a breath on sheer human instinct, and curse, and become, for thousands of years, a repository of memory.

There will be the counting, of course, interminable and sluggish. But there will also be the remembering, legacies suspended in time, flickering like candlelights. He is not, after all, the only human being who travels through time.

Someday, there will be Taiju, shiny-eyed and absurdly gentle, who will watch Senku trace careful scientific diagrams in his shaky, little-child writing. There will be Yuzuriha, small-boned and sturdy, who will ask him his favourite type of chocolate. There will be Taiju-and-Yuzuriha, improbable, inseparable, inseparably and improbably his friends.

There will be, and there was, and there is.

* * *

In the forest far beyond the edge of Ishigami Village, Homura will curl up in the tallest tree she can find and watch as they build a little stand. They, the builders, will cover this stand with a tarp, and Senku, the dangerous one, the scientific-prodigy one, the one that should be dead, will set on it something that looks like a little puff of cloud stolen straight out of the sunset sky.

He will look up at the dying light of the sun, and though there is no one to know the stories of the days and months he spent alone in this harsh stone world, Homura will read loneliness in the set of his shoulders and the flicker of his eyes. She will know there is a secret companionship to be found in loneliness, and this will make nostalgia stir inside her.

Homura will eat the cotton candy and not give one morsel to any starving animal but herself.

* * *

Kaseki will be many times older than the boy, the first time he meets him. The boy will grin, cocky. He will introduce himself and ask for Kaseki’s skills in the same breath. Kaseki will remember Chrome, and huff like it’ll hide the excitement boiling in him, and agree with no idea what he’s signing up for.

He will not regret a second of it. On his deathbed, Kaseki will decide that the years he spent alongside Senku and Chrome, mastering the impossible, miraculous art of trying, were some of the best years of his life.

Senku won’t always look at Kaseki in that soft, fond way he reserves for the young ones when he thinks no one is looking, but he will nod, an appreciative gleam in his eyes, at the katanas, at the beakers, at the gears, at the water wheel. They will see matching flames in each other, and it will make Senku laugh every time.

* * *

Chrome will feel tears streaming down his face as the singing spirals around them. When he sees the quiet curve of Senku’s mouth, the pleased but unsurprised inclination of Gen’s head, for the first time since meeting them, Chrome will understand the enormity of the things he lost before he was born. He will wallow in the infinity spinning out beneath his shoes and sob all the harder for the knowing.

Senku will blink at him for a split second, as much amused as mourning. 

Later, watching the ceiling of his hut, Chrome will hum a few notes to himself, and it will sound flimsy in this stifling little room under the dome of the ancient constellations. Senku will roll over to frown at him.

“Why aren’t you sleeping?”

The tune will die in a ragged death in Chrome’s throat. He will swallow, and admit, “I can’t stop hearing that song.”

“We used to have hundreds just like it,” Senku will say, and it will sound like a eulogy. 

Chrome will have taught himself self-sufficiency long before this moment. Kohaku and Suika and all the other village children, they will have learned the same—there is no evading such simple things as death when your world sharpens to bared teeth and hidden serpents and unadorned gravestones for the hungry and unwise. 

Chrome will have taught himself many things by the time Senku barrels into his life, but before they go to curl up in their adjacent bedrolls on that night, Senku will tell him the story of Atlas the star, in the Pleiades cluster, blue and burning. Chrome will discover in this lesson how to bear unbearable griefs, and this he will not have to teach himself.

* * *

Gen will be in the “science hut.” He will think this is an absurd and overly simplistic name, but he also will not expect much from these primitive villagers until he sees Chrome build his very own waterwheel. It will be late, as far as he can tell with the short days and the early dark. There will be no watches around for him to check.

Senku will be sitting across from him, their papers splayed out in the fading light. Senku will not be anything like what Gen would call an artist, but the plans are being drawn out regardless, and there will be a fire in Senku’s eyes as he works. It is genuine, Gen will be certain, this love of science that drives itself into Senku’s every movement.

But the fire will gutter as Senku yawns hugely. Gen will reach out, his hands halfway to touching Senku’s face before he remembers himself, and coo something like, “Why don’t you take a break? It’s no good doing work when you’re tired.”

Senku will stretch, will sigh as his bones crack loud enough to make Gen wince. “One more thing,” he will mutter, like a child bargaining for a few more minutes with their favourite video game, and Gen will be reminded again that this boy was a high schooler once. How strange. How world-tilting.

Gen will remember this murmured conversation, just as he will remember every murmured conversation he has with Senku, will memorize the cadence of his words when he smiles that dangerous smile and the rasp of his voice when he whispers in Gen’s ear and the laughter hiding under his tongue when he lies right to Gen’s face about the bottle of cola sitting in the lab waiting for Gen’s return.

Gen will keep these memories to himself, and they will hang frozen in time like a video put on pause, and he and Senku will lock eyes as they are falling asleep and know what it is to rest next to someone who could know you just from looking at you.

Gen will not say anything about it, but he will wonder what a soulmate is.

* * *

Someday, now or in the future or in the past, Byakuya will crouch down with a solemn smile before the children and he will say, “This is the hundredth tale, and it is about a boy named Ishigami Senku.”

Someday, the acrobat Homura will look the spearman Hyoga in the eye and tell him about loneliness spun out of sugar, carved by clever hands and cleverer minds. Hyoga’s eyes will crinkle at the corners as he smiles, and Homura will remember the bright, enticing colours of poisonous frogs.

Someday, Chrome will find a little child clinging to Suika’s side as she skips into the lab, bright-eyed and confident, and Suika will say, “This one wanted to know about your rock collection,” and Chrome will grin, certain he can carry on his friend’s memory.

Someday, Ruri, old and frail but with her bloodied lungs and stuttering breath long behind her, will gather the village kids and say, “This is the hundred and first tale.” She will point to the stars. “This is the story of the legacy of Ishigami Senku.”


End file.
